To have a more controlled recording environment, Mishkit converted his basement, family room, and garage into a four-room studio complete with a control room, live room, and two isolation booths (one of which hosts a pristine seven-foot 1929 Steinway B piano). To hear Mishkit tell it, the build was plagued with difficulties, particularly when it came to transform his basement into the main tracking room. “There was some serious noise echo from the floors above,” Mishkit explains. “We had to drop the ceiling a few feet and install a series of insulation springs and sheet rock just to fix that.”

Deva Productions’ scattered layout also presented a unique set of challenges to the musician. While Mishkit didn’t want to record with all the players in the same room— instead favoring a separation of signals when mixing—he nonetheless required an ease of communication from performer to performer, room to room. “I couldn’t have Plexiglas windows between every room, so I set up a closed-circuit television monitoring system with talkback for each room. That way we can all see each other when recording, and we don’t have to leave our posts to tell one another something.” Though Mishkit has optimized his home studio to suit a particular approach to recording—namely, total isolation of performers—he still likes to jump into the live room with all his buddies and capture a free jam from time to time. “Close-miking is key when you are all in one area and want some separation of the elements,” he instructs. “After all, it’s much easier to add ambience with reverbs to your close sound than it is to subtract ambience from room mics.”